1. It totally is to me. It tires me to work so hard to "translate" poor spelling and grammar into something coherent.

Until SL has voice, typing is the only way we can communicate with each other in world, so in my opinion, you've got to make an effort to do it as well as you're able.

Posted at 3:53PM on Oct 6th 2006 by Celebrity Trollop

2. I think I went through the same process as you, Akela. I would turn my nose up to people in the forums who demonstrated poor spelling and grammar, only to be devastated in the actual debate by their well informed, well educated point of view.

It's a matter of judging the WHOLE person rather than locking onto one foible.

Posted at 4:06PM on Oct 6th 2006 by Aimee Weber

3. I dream of a day that I can spell perfect in English or Swedish - that day will NEVER come to me as I am heavy dyslectic.

BUT I can promise you all that I do my best in both spelling and my try to write and explain my message.

And yes I am sure that intelligent caring lovely people can read and can and want to ustand what I write.. and not take me for dumb because I cant spell - because English are not my first language.

The ones that want to ustand a message and care about others - and want to communicate are the surviors.. today and tomorrow.

/Tina (PetGirl) Bergman

Posted at 4:46PM on Oct 6th 2006 by /Tina (PetGirl) Bergman

4. I agree with Tina. I do a lot of typos, and most of the time it is because english is not my first language. It's not that i don't KNOW the correct spelling... it's just that in the hurry it's less natural for me to write correctly. So please let's keep this in mind: English is a conventional language in world wide environments, and it will necessarily get worse as time passes, beacuse it will mix influences from other languages' grammars. Typos and (somewhat) poor grammar are just a consequence. Inevitable, in my opinion.

Posted at 5:55PM on Oct 6th 2006 by Zoe Visconti

5. I tend to equate typos and misspellings with stammering and the occasional "umm, err..." in spoken communication. Sure, given the choice and the time, few people would allow them to come out of their mouth/fingers. But, for live and direct text communication, I expect that for most people it's considerably more irritating to wait the extra time for a perfectly formed response. I often let inconsequential typos stand, even if I notice them before I hit the "Enter" key, on the assumption that it's more polite (or at least less irritating) to send out an imperfect response now than a well-proofed and correct one in 20 seconds (an eternity in live chat).

IRC-Speak, however, is another issue. Generally, for a moderately proficient typist, typing "Shut the F*ck Up" (just to pick an example out of the air- one I sometimes want to type when I see a conversation conducted with nothing but chat acronyms) doesn't take substantially longer than typing "STFU." I tend to avoid such acronyms on general principle. As you say, a hasty acronym carries unintended baggage, as far as how you're perceived socially.

I don't know, I guess I have a slightly illogical break point for politeness and response time. If it's a correction for a typographical error or misspelling, it's probably not worth the time and annoyance to fix (in my opinion). If it's a time saving acronym, it's worth the extra time to expand it, just to keep the general intelligence of the conversation at a tolerable level.

A full sentence conveys the impression that you're at least minimally invested and interested in continuing the conversation. You're taking the effort to show that, yes, you're listening and responding. It's the difference between a distracted grunt, and making eye contact, raising your eyebrows, smiling/frowning, etc. Looking at it that way, a hastily typed "LOL" is especially problematic. Few things are as irksome, possibly even hurtful, than having a joke met with a hasty, unappreciative response (the aforementioned distracted grunt). In person, you can see the grin and hear the laughter. In chat, the original LOL was meant to convey that in a text medium. Back in 1995, it was kind of nice. Now, of course, it's become shorthand acknowledgement. "Yes, you made a joke. Grunt." It's become a canned, kneejerk response, and no longer carries its original meaning.

Well, I'm wandering around what I'm trying to say here, so I'll let it go with "Typos okay. Chat acronyms, not so much."

Posted at 6:27PM on Oct 6th 2006 by Moriash Moreau

6. I think you can tell the difference between those whose English is not their first language, and those who just don't care.
My typing is not the fastest, and so it's either be left 2 minutes behind, or make a few shortcuts, such as
"how r u". But this is normally only in a crowed area, and the conversation is very fast.

Posted at 7:07PM on Oct 6th 2006 by Shockwave Plasma

7. I am (I think) pretty tolerant of people who don't speak/type English natively. But I am afraid that I do form negative opinions of people who use unnecessary abbreviations. Oddly, though, my reaction is rather selective.

LOL and ROFL: no problem, I am comfortable with those, because for me they are shorthand for an emotional response. I think someone saying "I find what you just said uproariously humorous" would strike me as rather sarcastic. But a LOL comes across to me as heartfelt.

On the other hand..."R" instead of "are", "U" instead of "you", "4" instead of for or four, "gr8" instead of "great"...sorry, folks, but right away I visualize someone with a sloppy, immature mind who really doesn't care enough to even type a couple of extra letters. I know its an unfair bias, but...it's the way I feel.

By the way: U r gr8, Aime, thx 4 xceptng my foibs!

Posted at 2:36AM on Oct 7th 2006 by Tomas Hausdorff

8. 100% with Tomas H. on this. Typos and acronyms are absolutely no problem with me, because everyone makes mistakes, shorthand saves time, a unique communication requires unique expressions, etc. However, people who consistently abbreviate words of 5 letters or less, or never use the shift key - ever, or people who never use a single non-alphanumerical character except in emoticons... those people I can't stand. I've often given them a chance (and still do), and never once has it resulted in anything short of a train wreck of a conversation.

This is not always for the same reason. Sometimes the person is so illiterate and so accustomed to their pidgin writing that deciphering what they say simply takes far, far longer than it would for them to just write everything out perfectly. Other times they really are unintelligent and have nothing worthwhile to say. Other times still they're immature and are unwilling to listen to anything meaningful I have to say.

The #1 impression I get, though, is that if you don't take the time to properly express yourself, you don't care enough about what you're telling me. And if you don't care, how do you expect ME to care?

Posted at 12:55AM on Oct 8th 2006 by Jordan

9. I agree with Tomas Hausdorff. As a non-native speaker I often make some typos and grammatical errors, escpecially if I'm in a hurry. But even me can't stand if someone is obviously not caring about how his texts look and if they are readable by anyone. In my opinion, It's a question of respect to put some effort (not necessarily extra time, though) in spelling and formulating. It's like you wouldn't speak in your strong accent or dialect to a foreigner in RL, so he can understand you without further obstruction. That, too, takes some extra concentration but not inevitable more time from the speaker.

As for abbreviations, I think some of them have their purpose as meaning something slighly else then the abbrevated. A "lol" simply informes the others that if one met in RL, they could hear you laugh now whereas a "/me is laughing out loud." looks to me as a much stronger statement which often isn't fitting. Another example are abbrevations like "RL" that tell the listener you mean the online- or SL-specific meaning of the words "Real Life" (as opposed to e.g. the scientists' discussion if viruses are living beings or not)

A "yw" is to me more like a friendly acknowledging nod than actually saying something.

Howeve me, too, I can't see any sense in using the "u R rly l8!!!" kind of abbrevations as for me, they actually slow down both, reading and writing and give sentences an -- in my opinion -- unpleasant optical look. Only 1337 is worse.

so long

Posted at 12:26PM on Oct 8th 2006 by Boroondas Gupte

10. well, i guess i make as many(if not more) typo's tahn anyone here, and i have spoke and typed english as long as i can remember. and let me be the first to remind you all... no one here seems to be immune from the occasional typo. typo's are not a sign of poor intelligence(as the the writer so implied, falsefully at the beginning of the article)nothing on you as a person Wolfie!

however, i went thru nmerous years of typing classes, and my current civilian job(i work in insurance) relies heavily on my typing skills. when i get on the computer for recreation, i cant stand to try to get it right. because i have to do that all day at work. im not writing a paper for school, or a presentation for work. and to be honest, i am not trying to impress anyone. its the same as talking on the phone or in person. when i am with my friends, i use a completely different form of speech than if i was with a client at work... or i have a 3rd language, i speak fluent military, complete with acronyms. it is hard to keep them all apart in the recreational typing. all i am saying is that i doubt everyone in SL that feels that the way you tpe is a direct hit on intelligence, is a freking english major, so let the lord(in whatever religion you practice) do the judging... and just have fun. life's too short to worry about where someone places a comma or an apostrophy, or even how someone phrases something. the english language differes in parts of the country as much as any other language does. different regions have different ways of saying the same thing.

and as for those abbreviations... those are for text messaging only. i use that feature alot... ON MY CELL PHONE!! lets do what we can to leave it there. that is all.

*steps off her soap box*

Posted at 2:57PM on Oct 8th 2006 by AllieKat Stovall

11. see what i mean. i just re-read my post and there are quite a bit of typo's in it.

Posted at 2:59PM on Oct 8th 2006 by AllieKat Stovall

12. As a secretary in my daily life, I actually find that the main cause of poor typing, or mistypes for me inworld is that there is a distinct lag in the chat between when I type and when it registers the letter (as compared to say.. a word processing program or even a webpage). This tends to slow me down a bit and cause "finger stumble" where one hand winds up typing faster than the other.

And don't get me started on the inablity to backspace properly to fix it. Most of the time it's easier to just delete the whole line and start over.

Posted at 1:24PM on Oct 9th 2006 by Gwyon